What best describes me? Misunderstood, perceptive, a joker, faithful, and unforgettable.

I feel fortunate to be the age that I am, in this online gaming community. I was just old enough to witness the grand revolutions in video game technologies in the last 10 years alone, and my mind wanders to think of what the next 10 years will bring. However, as the worlds we share and play in continue to grow in spectacle and complexity, so too must our ways of living in them. It is no longer enough to simply mine ore or level your character faster than others, we must understand the wonderful oppertunities that await us in a world where we play with other human beings. Heck, if you just wanted to mine rocks, go play that offline and away from me!

I was always the oddball in MUDs. My characters had in-depth backgrounds, emotions, and responses. When I play Quake-like games, I'm always the one throwing out the best text messages (sometimes just to goad slow-typers into being distracted long enough so that I can shoot them when they're down). I have never used the expression 'LOL', as I think its a bastardization of the english language we use to type with - if I want to laugh, I laugh.

I tried my hand at Ultima Online. My God, so many people are fools that play that game! It really isn't much more than a glorified IRC, but still I had some sense of hope that depth could be brought to that dark and shallow world by means of social interaction. Boy was I wrong 99% of the time - as it turns out, most people are content to just log on, raise some kind of skill by sending the same command over and over. The game itself has no purpose, or even very much along the lines of rewards for all your hard work. The only thing UO has to offer is a hell of a lot of fun when you break the rules! To all the UO players out there that actually play that lame-ass game the way it was made to be played, I pity you. Why not just stare at the floor for 3 hours instead?

What does the future hold? I'm moving onto Anarchy Online. I feel that the rich storyline behind the game gives players, or rather forces players to interact with each other and roleplay more. Wide-open spaces, big cities, and the lonely howel of the desert will be my main haunts from here on.

To all the players that are going to think just a little bit more when they find themselves in a game world with other people, because I did something they had never seen before, I wish all the best of luck and hope our paths meet again.